


Red

by themegalosaurus



Series: J2 Set Stories [5]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Character Bleed, Hurt Jared Padalecki, M/M, On Set, Safewords, Season/Series 10, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 13:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While filming for the scene in Season 10 where Sam hurts his shoulder, Jared's real-life injury causes problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agelade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agelade/gifts).



"OK, OK, OK, enough now, guys," John says, and Jared knows it’s getting to the point now where he ought to start listening; ought to stop pulling Blue Steel in Jensen’s face just to watch him corpse. It’s been a long day on set - fight scenes always take forever - and though most of the crew are still laughing it’s definitely starting to wear thin. So he tries, he really tries but at the start of this final setup there’s a moment where Demon!Dean is supposed to step up real close to Sam’s face and begin his speech… and Jensen is right there and Jared knows he shouldn’t but he does, he just sticks his tongue out and tips Jensen on the nose and that’s it, they’re both laughing again and the director’s going to kill Jared pretty soon, he thinks.

After they quiet down Jensen catches his eye, shakes his head just a little and Jared nods, yeah, message received, time to stop kidding around. So he shakes out his arms and his legs: well, his left arm anyway. It’s best not to make any sudden movements with the right, which is already aching from a whole afternoon with no sling. Then he scrunches his face a few times to get the giggles out; and he and Jensen move back to their places, and they start the scene over again.

This time, everything goes well. Jensen’s really embracing the chance this season has given him to play something a little more loose and louche than Dean’s angry depression. His Demon!Dean is sing-song and casual, threatening in a Jack Nicholson kind of way, and even while Jared’s carefully channelling Sam’s panicky fear he’s still thinking somewhere in the back of his mind what a great job Jen’s doing.

This scene is particularly intense. Dean’s got Sam cornered in the empty back room of a bar, and he’s playing; toying with Sam’s uncertainty about how far and how completely Dean’s gone, whether there’s anything left of him behind the old swaggering bravado and the new black eyes. So there’s Sam, vulnerable, hopeful, unsure, back with his brother for the first time since he saw him die. He listens as Dean starts to open up, start to choke out his anxieties and his hatred of what he’s become. And Sam (hopeless softie that he is) is so happy, so earnest and so eager to be able to help, that he starts busting out assurances left right and centre, come on Dean, don’t worry about it, Sam will fix him, he’ll figure out how. Dean just has to come back with him. They can work it out. Like they always do.

And that – of course – is the point where Dean suddenly turns: rolls his eyes back to black and breaks out the blade from behind him, wrestles Sam onto his knees with the knife at his throat. And he twists Sam’s arm and watches his little brother squirm as he explains to him just how fundamentally he does not care. So by the end of the scene, when Dean vanishes, snapping out demonically off to the-devil-knows-where, Sam’s sick to his stomach and weeping and bereft – and, more importantly, his shoulder’s been wrenched out of joint, just like Jared’s after that oh-so-amusing wrestling bout with Osric this summer in Rome. And then Jared can get back to wearing the sling on set and stop killing himself with long days without it, made longer by his own inability to stop goofing around.

But he has stopped, for now at least, and damn if it’s not paying off. Some of the giddy energy built up over the afternoon seems to have surged its way into the scene, so that Jared can feel himself trembling with a mixture of Sam’s nervous anxiety and his own adrenalin high. Jensen’s obviously live with it, too, perfectly nailing the angry pathos that the scene demands. And when they hit the crucial moment where Dean suddenly stops making nice, Jen switches so sudden into violent malevolence that even Jared, knowing what’s coming, needn’t feign Sam’s shock.

Wrenched to the ground with a jolt to his knees that sends an aching throb through his right-hand side, Jared feels Jensen’s fingers digging into his clavicle, Jensen’s thumb firm on the blade of his back. It’s painful already, though the thing has had months of healing; but he can hear the beautiful, menacing flow of Jensen’s words and he really doesn’t want to be the one to interrupt them. John’s been totally clear: the whole speech is supposed to be filmed in a single long take. After the ride the poor guy’s had with them both today, Jared should at least  _try_  to let the dude get what he wants.

So he grits his teeth, lets the pain onto his face – because Sam is supposed to be hurting too, remember – and tries to just ride it out. Which is fine, and you know, Jared’s a big tough guy, but fuck if it isn’t really starting to hurt. “Dean,” he gasps out, trying not to sound too frantic.

Turns out that maybe frantic would have been a good idea; because Jensen’s only gripping him more tightly, and he’s starting to twist. “ _Dean,”_ Jared says, more pointedly, but the only response is a laugh.

“Sorry, Sammy,” Jen says. “That won’t work any more.”

Jared’s really gritting his teeth, now, breathing tight and shallow through his nose. He can feel the shoulder wrenching, those carefully re-stitched muscles all straining and then – oh God. Dean twists off and away and Jared’s shoulder twists with him; and he  _feels_ the blood draining out of his face as the bone pops back out of joint with a dizzying, white-hot stab. Surely someone must have noticed that. Surely Dean’s speech must be ending soon… but Jensen’s voice is still rumbling on and Jared squints through the pain towards anybody, someone, trying to be subtle while also quite definite that he needs this to stop. He tries to crane his head round and catch Jensen’s eye, but the movement sends a new wave of agony straight down his spine. Jared wonders if he might pass out.

It’s at this point that Dean – that Jensen – steps back to make his final move, his last words of rejection coupled with the brutal tug on the shoulder that leaves Sam in a sling. Jared remembers this at the moment Jen’s fingertips touch him and nope, sorry, no way, not this time, he’s had it, he’s done. So, caution to the wind, he says it.

“ _Red_ , Jensen! Red! OK?  _Red.”_

“Jared? Oh Christ,” and Jensen’s down on the floor beside him, stricken and panicking, all Dean’s confidence vanished away. “Oh my God,” he says, “are you alright? What happened? Is it the shoulder? Why didn’t you stop me before? I’m so sorry, oh God.”

“Yeah,” Jared says, “yeah, the shoulder.” It’s all he can manage but he’s so, so grateful for the fact that it’s finally over that it takes him probably much longer than it should to think about the details of what just went down. It’s not until he’s had the joint popped back in and Jen’s hovering beside him with an ice pack in his hand that Jared actually starts to wonder, did anybody get it? Is that nine years of careful cover, blown in one moment of pain?

He catches Jensen’s eye and surprise, they’re completely in tune.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jensen says. “I don’t think they really heard. And… anyway. ’Red’. That’s pretty innocent. You know. Doesn’t have to mean anything more.”

“Sure,” says Jared. But he’s not all that shocked to find a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs in his trailer the next day on set.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to [agelade](http://archiveofourown.org/users/agelade/works)'s prompt, which asked for season 10 J2 RPF with hurt!Jared, demon!Dean, safewording and character bleed. You can find it full [on her Tumblr page](http://agelade.tumblr.com/post/92250051637/usually-rpf-is-a-squick-for-me-but-right-now-i).


End file.
